Upcoming Ainsworth Film Fest to feature ‘magic lanterns’

AINSWORTH — The Ainsworth Film Festival — an annual showcase of multimedia entertainment older than almost anyone alive, as collected by Washington County Historian Michael Zahs — is scheduled at the Ainsworth Opera House on July 26 and 27.

Zahs said this year’s event would feature a handful of films from before 1908, as it always does, but would center on a recently acquired collection of “magic lantern” slides, a format of transparent, painted glass plates that appear to move when placed in a specialized projector. Some of the moving images are accompanied by music now playable at the opera house, after extensive efforts to digitize the recordings previously stored on wax cylinders.

The medium predates film, and is an ancestor to other formats that would later be known as “moving pictures” and eventually, “movies.”

Such slides are also increasingly difficult to find. The glass plates are not especially easy to preserve over time, and the specialty projector requires a specific light bulb that’s no longer in production. Zahs said a handful of this year’s magic lantern slides had likely not been viewed in over 150 years, dating back to the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War. One item from the collection comes much later, depicting the sinking of the Titanic.

“I was able to get a collection of 30, (and) to get any collection of magic lanterns, that is almost impossible,” he said. “They’re 150, 200 years old, and they’re glass. If you have a set of five, the chances of all five still existing is almost none. And this collection I was able to find, has 30.”

Zahs said he sourced the collection from eBay.

The upcoming showcase will display the magic lantern slides much like they were often enjoyed in their prime, according to Zahs: in a special event, before an eager crowd. The back-to-back screenings are also typical for items in the Brinton Film Collection, an array of short films produced by Frank and Indiana Brinton in Ainsworth around the start of the 20th century.

“Mr. Brinton would have shown them with live music and motion pictures and things,” Zahs said. “There were a lot of magic lantern shows that had religious themes, and a lot of them that had fraternal organization themes.”

The upcoming film festivals will follow cookies and an ice cream social at the Ainsworth Opera House, starting at 7 p.m. both nights. The price of admission is a freewill donation to the opera house.

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com